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What NAS To Buy?
An anonymous reader writes "Currently, I'm running an old 4u Linux server for my private backup and storage needs. I could add new drives, but it's just way too bulky (and only IDE). For the sake of size and power efficiency I think about replacing it with a NAS solution, but cannot decide which one to get. The only requirements I have are capacity (>1.5TB) and RAID5. Samba/FTP/USB is enough. Since manufacturers always claim their system to be the best, I'd like to hear some suggestions from you Slashdot readers."
... then you will end up with another Linux box. Not necessarily bad, but NAS devices in your range are what you already have. Just packaged a bit nicer, with a customised web gui.
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.. but unfortunately all the pre-built NAS cubes I`ve seen are way over priced. They usually end up costing about as much as a home built file server _without_ the drives.
The way I look at it, by building your own, at least you can also use it for other things (if it's just a personal file server). I have a 3 TB file server that I also host virtual machines on. Even in software raid, with many drives, there is not much resource usage. If you buy a NAS cube, you are paying the same price or higher, and _just_ getting a file server.
With any of these RAID methods make sure you pay attention to your disk controllers as well. If you have a controller go out and all the disks on that controller go with it, what happens to your array? Things to keep in mind...
I've got a ReadyNAS NV+ (formerly Infrant, now Netgear) and really like it. I'll happily recommend it to anybody. Prices after the Netgear buyout went up a bit, but it's still a decent option if you can afford it.
Their forums have lots of good technical moderators who interact a lot. It runs Linux under the hood, and they will happily tell you how to tweak things that can't really be officially supported. Netgear hasn't seemed to mess up the good support and online community Infrant got started from what I can tell.
I had the power supply die, and they RMA'd it quickly. When I got the replacement back I had some issues with getting it to recognize my old disks (OS version for the new NAS was lower than the one from the old NAS, and you need the disks in the NAS when you upgrade it as things get written to flash and the disks).
It's very quite and doesn't use nearly as much juice as a real PC, and can be officially or unofficial setup to serve HTTP, SSH, pull BitTorrent, serve streaming media & piles of other stuff.
Saying "Get a SAN instead" is like telling someone to "Get a LAN instead" when they're asking what web server to use.
And really, a SAN Storage device such as a Clariion is pretty much the same as a NAS except the interface is different - and in the case of iSCSI, the interface is actually the same.
The line between "SAN Storage" and "NAS" is really blurred these days.
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A lower power PC is ideal for this sort of thing, for a few reasons. An underclocked and undervolted Sempron is ideal, and will only use maybe 40-50W including the HDDs so should only cost a few pounds a month to run at most (try http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp).
I use Windows XP for mine. I connect other PCs and an XBOX via Samba, but of course FTP/NFS etc are also possible. Windows has the advantage of NTFS, which is robust and supports Unicode fully. Performance over gigabit is descent, up to 60MB/sec.
I can also run other useful stuff on the box, including BitTorrent, Tor and weekly anti-virus scans. It's handy to have an always-on general purpose box. Admin is via VNC.
The only real down side of using Windows is that power saving for HDDs sucks. Ideally they would spin down when not in use, but with Windows it just doesn't work. If you want mounted volumes on the drives, periodic access (even with crap like System Restore and the Indexing Service disabled) prevents them from staying spun down for more than a minute or two.
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